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Dear Steve:
Thanks for your note.
1. "You touch on a number of what I consider to be cruxes of the
industrial agriculture/sustainable agriculture biscuit. In fact, I wonder
if you would mind if I forwarded it to thethe entire newsgroup, so we can
get some more interested people involved in this discussion. What do you
think?"
That'd be great. Feel free to forward this message as well, if you wish.
2. "Why are you a nonbeliever in agrarianism? At first blush, it seems to
me that many of the people who left their farms for jobs in the cities
would have been better off if staying profitably on the farm had been an
option."
My main point is that staying on the farm is just another way of making a
living, like assembling auto parts, teaching public utility economics,
collecting garbage, etc. Working days in Manhattan and sleeping nights in
an urban apartment above a Morningside Heights drugstore or restaurant is
just as much a "way of life" as working a freehold farm. In fact, turn my
hypothetical Manhattanite into the owner of the very same drugstore or
restaurant -- make her the descendant of the operation's first owner, who
opened shop six years after arriving from Krakow -- and you have the same
claim to family heritage, entrepreneurial independence, "character," and
all other intangibles that the family farm movement routinely makes. But
we as a society routinely watch urban small businesses fold, their children
dissipated, and the founding generation's "way of life" swallowed up by the
need (and desire) to adapt and thereby to advance. No one has an
entitlement to earn his or her living any particular way. To pitch an
illusory entitlement to farm as a matter of *staying* on one's forebears'
farm compounds the error. Giving the farm sector special treatment smacks
of paternalism or of special-interest kid-glove treatment -- or,
shockingly, both.
3. "[M]ilk labeling hasn't been a big deal here, so you'll have to help me
out: are you saying labeling increases the price of both + and - rBST
milk by $0.25? Or is there just a premium for one or the other? I agree
the latter doesn't seem too fair,but I can't complain much about the
former. It seems tome that people who choose rBST-free milk aren't
necessarily showing simply that they're concerned about the various human-
and animal health issues. It seems likely that they're also expressing
less tangible (butmaybe more important) views about how they'd like their
food supply system to work."
You're right on most counts. Labeling is primarily a New England and Upper
Midwest phenomenon. Those are the regions that host the most
vulnerable dairy farms in the country. Two factors loom large: small herd
sizes and operator resistance to new technology. Both facets of
traditional dairy farming a la Wisconsin/Vermont reduce farmers'
margins, especially in an age when advanced refrigeration and shipping
have made milk and milk products easy to transport and rendered
pasture-based dairy farming quaint at best and obsolete at worst.
Concentrated feed -- which requires no pastures whatsoever (ask any of the
California dairy farmers who have made their state America's new
Dairyland) -- is the production norm of the day. As for consumption,
Americans routinely consume milk produced by Danish and Italian cows
(albeit as Havarti and parmesan). So much for the
local-milk-is-healthy-milk ideology.
Enough of the prologue. This region's labeling frenzy overlooks the cold
reality of the milk handling process. Because no single farm's output can
supply any given dairy's milk needs, the dairies begin commingling
different farmers' milk from the point of pickup. Segregating Milk Classic
from New Milk requires a separate (but equal?!) fleet of trucks, collecting
vats, etc. Then there's the problem of verification. Right now Minnesota
and other states are content to rely on farmer affidavits. Given the utter
(udder??) lack of compositional difference between the two types of milk,
the incentive to cheat is extraordinary. Monsanto delivers Posilac via
UPS, and casual sightings of the parcel service's trademark brown trucks
have shot up even as explanations of the deliveries have dried up. The ag
economists' wisdom is that the 30 cent premium -- which applies to rbST-free
milk *alone* -- does not begin to cover the actual increased costs of
production. Some rbST opponents have howled bloody murder, protesting
that the dairies had used the Posilac approval as an excuse to
boost the price of "normal" milk. What these folks don't understand is
that they aren't getting the same product any more. Milk Classic, after
February 1994, is a low-tech product in its making and a high-tech product
in its shipping and processing.
You are also correct in identifying a "social" or "moral" dimension
independent of the rather implausible concerns over animal or human
health. (The former, incidentally, is in my mind one of the most offensive
aspects of this whole, awful debate. The Jeremy Rifkin crowd has pounded
the animal health drum with relish, but neglect either to consider or to
disclose the inherent contradiction between milk consumption and Rifkin's
brand of vegetarianism. Milk is meat: the calves needed to prime milk
production turn largely into veal, and retired dairy cows become ground
beef. Remember that there are no bovine cemeteries.) But virtually every
state labeling law has defied the FDA's labeling guidance regulation, which
admonishes *local* legislators to adhere to the *federal* approval of rbST
as an animal drug. The federal labeling guidelines would require
state-mandated or state-approved labels to remind consumers that there is
no compositional difference in the milk and that the FDA has allayed
concerns regarding human health and animal health as a surrogate for human
health. Adherence to the guidelines would turn the labeling scheme into an
opportunity for food coop patrons and other advocates of traditional,
organic, or sustainable agriculture to "vote" through voluntary tax
payments -- especially now that the Supreme Court has rightly struck
down the Massachusetts dairy protectionism program. As matters stand,
though, the amount of mass hysteria being spread by anti-rbST consumer
terrorists has most (relatively uninformed) consumers willing to plunk down
an extra quarter per gallon to avoid a phantom health risk. Note that
this tax falls hardest on the poor and the young: those most likely to rely
on milk and milk products in lieu of meat as a source of animal proteins.
These are also the consumers with the least access to nutritional
information and even less ability to influence the crass political process
that drives the warrantless war against rbST. The milk hormone is one of
the lowest-tech developments in the new DNA-driven world of agriculture. I
shudder to think of the consumer gouging that will go on in the name of
farm primacy in the coming years.
Well, that's enough for now. I've spent the better part of six months
studying the rbST controversy and getting mad about its excesses. I
hope you and your colleagues will pardon the occasional fit of intemperence
on my part. Reason is always in short supply in agricultural debates.
Passion, for good and for ill, hardly ever is.
Cheers,
Jim Chen
University of Minnesota Law School
229 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
voice: (612) 625-4839
fax: (612) 625-2011